Whoof! This has been an interesting day. We were on the I75 SUV Speedway Slitherway before seven this morning, slithering our way from the Planet Ann Arbor to the Great White North, the cFam’s Group Home at Houghton Lake, to be exact. We won’t talk about the driving except to say that there was quite a bit of off-roading but not by us. The Dogha managed to hold the road.

We arrived here in the late morning and the Uncly Uncle was rarin’ to go x-c skiing. Me? I have to admit, I was a little reluctant. Why? Well… I love to ski. I have been skiing most of my life. I switched from downhill over to x-c in my 20s. I’ll never be any more than an amateur skier but I am a pretty strong amateur on average terrain with decent snow. Last winter? I did not manage to go skiing AT ALL. I’m not sure why, exactly. I had to look back at my blahg to remember what the heck I was doing all last winter. It seems I was up here. It seems I was in the Yooperland. But not when there was enough snow for skiing.

This morning? The first half mile or so was BRUTAL!!! I knew it was going to be brutal and that’s why I was reluctant. I never did get totally up to my usual speed but after a while, I started to get my “wind” back and, by the end of the five miles or whatever it is, I was ecstatic to find that the uphill stretches weren’t even bothering me much. If I could do what I did today *every* day for a week, I would be in great skiing shape. I get a lot of exercise for a baggy old broad with a sedentary thinky-type job but I wish I could make time for more. And I wish there were more opportunities to x-c ski near the Planet Ann Arbor. But there usually isn’t enough snow.

So, we are here at Houghton Lake with the Uncly Uncle and their brother Jim and his daughter The Beautiful Chelsea and it is relatively stormy here with snow and some gusty winds and that photooo is of Jim playing around with the old yooper-style snowblower that used to belong to The Old Coot, aka my dad.

I was touched almost beyond words when I found out from the GG that my BFF Sam the Archaeologist and her husband jcb were apparently planning to arrive here tonight for a surprise visit. From Atlanta! I mean, they weren’t planning to travel all that way just to see *me*. The main purpose was to spend time with her elderly parents in Michigan. But still. Their plans were kiboshed by the weather and as much as I miss my friend, this would not have been a good day to drive all the way up here. So, a toast to Sam and jcb and a HUGE HUG to my Sam!

I hope you have managed to wade through all that stuff because, well, last but not anywhere least, today is The Grinchie’s birthday. The Grinch is my loverly “cuzzint” and I will not tell you his exact age but it does have a zero in it. So, happy birthday to my favo-rite grinch! Love you, old boy.

Oh, and click here for a few photooos (on Flickr) of our little ski trip today. (They are also on facebook, so some of y’all may already have seen them.)

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 15th, 2011 at 5:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.